Biography

I began teaching at the University of Calgary in July 1985 and since then have taught courses in French, Comparative Literature, German, and Political Science at our University. My current research studies the interrelations between words and images, beginning with Denis Diderot's Salons and continuing on, through Baudelaire and Stendhal, to contemporary literature. In 1993-1994 and 1997-98, I was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at University of Constance, Germany. Then in 1998, I was Visiting Professor at the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil where I gave a Graduate Course in cultural semiotics Words and Images. From 2001 until 2006, I was a member of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative "Le Soi et l'autre" at the Université du Quebec à Montreal; since 2001 I have also been a member of the Research Group APPLA & CO (Approches Pragmatiques en Philosophie du Langage et de la Communication) at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris ; In 2009 and in 2013, I was again Invited Professor in Sao Paulo and Vitoria, Brazil respectively; in 2012 I was Invited Professor at the University of Paris 3. I was very happy to be elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2009.

Additional Studies

Freiburg in Breisgau (Germany), Besançon (France), McMaster University and the University of Toronto